"The outlaws these days just keep getting worse with every generation."
Mu Chen gazed into the distance with a wistful look, as though he were reminiscing about something.
Zhan Xiong's head was still pinned beneath his foot, his face buried in the dirt. No matter how he struggled, Mu Chen's foot held him down like a mountain.
"Useless. You have no reason to keep living."
Mu Chen shook his head in disappointment, then raised his foot and stomped toward Zhan Xiong's neck.
The human body could be fragile, and the neck was a vital weak point.
With no spiritual energy protecting him, if Mu Chen's foot landed, Zhan Xiong would surely die.
"Don't! Don't hurt my younger brother!"
"Brother Mu Chen, all the points my brother and I have are in here. Please, show mercy and let us go. We admit defeat this time."
In the distance, Zhan Cheng rose to his feet, leaning on his broken sword. Gravely wounded by a single blow, he shouted in desperation.
As he spoke, he hurled his Blood-Colored Token with all his might.
With his back to Zhan Cheng, Mu Chen seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. He casually reached behind him with his right hand and caught the flying black shape precisely between two fingers.
"You should've said that sooner."
Mu Chen brought their Blood-Colored Tokens together. The five points on the Zhan brothers' token were immediately transferred to his own.
The Zhan brothers had entered the Spirit Road only half a day before him, but they had been quick.
In just half a day, they had killed four low-level Spirit Beasts.
Three were at the initial stage, and one was at the intermediate stage, giving them five points.
Zhan Cheng watched, heart aching.
He'd even snatched those five measly points—not a scrap of mercy in him!
Still, at least they were safe now.
"Still, you may escape death, but you won't escape punishment."
Before Zhan Cheng could breathe a sigh of relief, Mu Chen struck again.
"Ah!"
As Zhan Xiong screamed over and over, Mu Chen stomped and broke all four of his limbs.
"You broke your word!"
Zhan Cheng's heart and guts nearly burst with rage. He was about to unleash a stream of curses when a tiny stone traced a graceful arc through the air and struck him squarely in the chest.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Zhan Cheng suffered the same fate; seven or eight ribs snapped in his chest.
"I said I'd spare your lives. I never said I wouldn't hurt you."
"The Spirit Road Selection. What a fine start."
At last, Mu Chen stopped tormenting Zhan Xiong, whose limbs were all broken. He brushed the dirt from his boots, then strode off laughing as the Zhan brothers watched him in sheer terror.
"Waaah, big brother, why are we so unlucky? Our first robbery, and it's already gone so badly. I want to go home!"
Once they were sure the Great Demon King had left, the brothers huddled together and wept.
The Great Thousand World's medicinal arts were highly advanced.
Broken bones were no great difficulty to treat, but recovery took time.
And time was precisely what they lacked. Fall behind once, and you'd keep falling behind.
In a sense, the Zhan brothers had already been eliminated.
On a clearing, beasts roared one after another.
Two strange Spirit Beasts, their bodies completely bloodred and a black horn growing from each forehead, looked like a cross between a tiger and a pig. Their eyes were scarlet as they snarled and snapped at a young man.
Blood Pig-Tigers, low-level Spirit Beasts!
The handsome young man in white fought barehanded, his movements agile as he darted between the two ferocious low-level Spirit Beasts, keeping them occupied.
Every so often, he made them bleed, yet he remained completely unharmed.
"Roar! Roar!"
Blinded, with hot blood streaming from wounds all over their bodies, the Blood Pig-Tigers gradually lost their wits. One after another, they went berserk and attacked wildly.
Blood Pig-Tigers were clumsy, but their hides were thick and they could take an extraordinary beating.
Their only weak point was the neck.
Once fully grown, they could reach the intermediate stage of the Spirit Movement Realm.
These two cubs likewise had the strength of the initial stage of the Spirit Movement Realm.
The young man in white clearly knew their weakness well. Three figures blurred past each other. A flash of black light, and blood burst skyward from beneath both beasts' necks. They crashed to the ground.
And who was that handsome young man, if not Mu Chen?
This was his fifth day on the Spirit Road, and he had already hunted seventeen beasts.
"Two more points. Not bad."
Mu Chen took turns smashing his palm into the Blood Pig-Tigers' heads.
Blood-red light scattered as two fist-sized orbs slowly rose into the air.
Within each orb, a miniature Blood Pig-Tiger roared, brimming with ferocity.
A potent ripple of spiritual energy spread faintly from them.
Spirit Beast Essences were the equivalent of a human martial artist's Spirit Soul.
Mu Chen brought out his Blood-Colored Token and absorbed the Spirit Beast Essences.
As always, the spiritual energy gained from hunting Spirit Beasts split in two. Part flowed into the token as points, while the rest slipped deep into his body, widening his meridians and strengthening his flesh.
After feeling the warmth flow through his body, Mu Chen opened his eyes. "My spiritual body has reached the peak of the first level. One more big fellow should be enough to advance me to the second level."
As soon as he finished speaking, he was gone again.
According to the information he'd gathered, a big fellow was roaming twenty li to the southwest.
Among the dense shrubs, a massive, earthen-yellow bear several meters tall lay sprawled out. Having finished its meal, it lounged there to rest, lazily licking its paw from time to time.
Mountain Bears were the overlords among low-level Spirit Beasts, and adults could reach the late stage of the Spirit Movement Realm.
Their bodies were huge, and their strength immense.
Even the Blood Pig-Tiger, renowned among low-level Spirit Beasts for its defenses, would be like paper in front of an adult Mountain Bear. A single swipe could smash several of them to pieces.
Its heart was its only weakness—and even that was hardly a weakness.
Hidden in the canopy of a towering ancient tree, Mu Chen looked down at the bear below. Information about the earthen-yellow giant flowed through his mind.
"A big fellow on the verge of breaking through to the ranks of intermediate Spirit Beasts."
He quickly reached his conclusion.
Only human Spirit Wheel martial artists could fight intermediate Spirit Beasts head-on.
With his strength at the Sensing Realm and his spiritual body at the first level, he couldn't fight it barehanded.
He would have to borrow a divine weapon's power to kill this beast.
At that thought, Mu Chen's heart stirred, and he immediately summoned an item from his Mustard Seed Bracelet.
The weapon was plain and unadorned, nothing more than an ordinary-looking staff, about an inch thick and five feet long.
A faint glimmer of spiritual light shimmered along its slender shaft. But the Spirit Road's rules had suppressed it to the extreme. The light was so dim it could barely be seen, almost extinguished.
This weapon was called the Demon-Subduing Staff, a quasi-divine artifact that surpassed even top-grade Spirit Artifacts.
And because, when the staff touched the ground, its tip was level with Mu Chen's brow, it was also called the Eyebrow-Level Staff.
When Mu Chen first embarked on the path of cultivation, his father, King of Hundred Spirits Mu Feng, had gathered the royal craftsmen and the continent's renowned Spirit Artifact Masters to forge it for him as a gift.
As for why it was called the Demon-Subduing Staff?
When Mu Feng, that ruler of kings, entered the Supreme realm, the Supreme Dharma Body he condensed was the Demon Subduing Dharma Body, ranked thirty-fifth on the list of Ninety-Nine Grade Supreme Dharma Bodies.
He learned from every school, studied a hundred classics, and combined various staff techniques to create a peerless art: the Demon-Subduing Staff Technique. It consisted of thirty-three forms, all of which he passed down to his own son.
That was how the Demon-Subduing Staff got its name.
An ancient saying of the Great Thousand World went: "All arts spring from the staff."
If the saber was the king of a hundred weapons, then the staff was the forefather of ten thousand.
Nearly every long weapon had developed from the staff, and its techniques had likewise grown from staff techniques. The staff was the source of all weapons.
It was this mighty old saying that led Mu Chen, when he first entered the martial path, to reject the eighteen types of weapons—including sabers, swords, axes, and battle-axes—and choose the uncommon staff.
P.S. This chapter is just a transition, introducing the protagonist's weapon.
The editor is off on weekends. I finally waited until Monday for them to get back to work and wanted to ask my editor about signing, but there's still no reply.
Who knows what they're busy with? Aah! I want to sign! I want my status changed!
Before you continue